A look inside one of America's most politically consequential churches

Mark Driscoll, the founding pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church, indelibly impacted American evangelicalism. Driscoll's brash, authoritarian, and profanity-laden leadership grew Mars Hill Church into one of the fastest growing, most innovative, and most influential churches in the country--not an easy task in one of America's most secular cities. Driscoll's gender theology put men at the forefront of American Christianity, rebranding Jesus from a gay hippie in a dress to a sword-carrying, robe-dipped-in-blood warrior. This type of rhetoric paved the way for evangelicals' embrace of hypermasculine Christianity, priming the pump for their unprecedented support of Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.

Making Christianity Manly Again places Driscoll's gender theology in its social and historical contexts and analyzes the contemporary social patterns that explain how a hypermasculine theology helped create a megachurch empire. By addressing the rhetoric of Driscoll's movement through his sermons, along with narratives from former Mars Hill Church members, sociologist Jennifer McKinney leads us to a better understanding of the dynamics of the evangelical impulse to reclaim and glorify men's power. These dynamics, as McKinney shows, have fueled a growing Christian nationalist movement, with enormous implications for religion and politics in America.

 

Product Details

• Date Published: February 3, 2023
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Language: English
• Format: Hardcover
• Print Length: 280 pages
• ISBN: 9780197655795
• ISBN10: 0197655793
• Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Condition: Used Very Good

 

Product Tags#  Religious gender ideology, Culture and Politics, American Evangelicalism,

 

Author Bio: Jennifer McKinney

Jennifer McKinney is Professor of Sociology and Director of Women’s Studies at Seattle Pacific University, where her teaching and research explore the intersections of gender, family, and religion. She holds a PhD and MS in Sociology from Purdue University and a BA from Kentucky Wesleyan College.

Her scholarship focuses on the influence of religious gender ideology on culture and politics, and her work has appeared in leading journals, including The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and The Sociological Quarterly. She is also co-author of Understanding and Applying Research Design with Martin Lee Abbott.

McKinney’s latest book, Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, and American Evangelicalism (2023), examines the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church as a case study in hypermasculine theology and its impact on American evangelicalism. Drawing on Driscoll’s sermons, former member narratives, and sociological analysis, McKinney demonstrates how this movement shaped not only church life but also the broader political climate of American evangelical support in the Trump era.